


House of the River Styx

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Erotic, Lust, Multi, Older Man/Younger Woman, Penny Dreadful - Freeform, Victorian Times, malnessa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 06:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14994413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: He doesn't know if he should be furious or frightened after Vanessa's performance at the seance. He decides he cannot feel either emotion, as he returns home to a house filled with death and demons. . .  beginning of season one.





	House of the River Styx

“You man. You animal. You man! You animal!”

The words echo in his mind as his carriage carries him through the flooded streets of London to his house. His house of death and demons. It is as though his carriage carries him across cursed waters to a cursed abode. Over the River Styx to a haunted home.

He doesn’t know if he should be furious or frightened.

“Save me! Find me! Save me!”

Her voice rang out like the cry of a harpy.

He decides to be neither frightened or furious. He opts for feeling frustrated. He was following a lead by attending this foolish party at Lyle's, and he's returned home with not even a thread more information on his daughter to weave into their twisted tapestry. The rain batters the roof of his carriage and the thunder rolls and he is simply defeated. He walks into his own home a defeated man. What a sorry homecoming. Up the stairs he plods. He makes for the third floor, for his rooms, but he stops on the second landing and goes down the hall. Her door is unlocked and he enters.

She is partially wrapped in a white sheet. Her hair is a disheveled mess around her naked shoulders. She shivers in her sleep. Her eyelids twitch. He leans down close to her face and smells the stench of brandy on her breath. The thin skin of her eyelids are violet as they flicker in her uneasy sleep. Almost against his will, he kisses her furrowed forehead and his lips come away with the taste of sweat, although her skin is cold. He lifts a blanket from the end of her bed and tosses it gently over her feral frame with a flick of his wrist. He sighs and turns to leave.

“It wasn’t me.”

Her voice is a dark chord played on a cello. He turns to see her eyes have opened and search for his.

“You said most vile manner of things, Vanessa.”

“It wasn’t me.” She repeats this as though it is an oath.

“Do you remember? The things you said, do you remember?”

“I do, as though through the ether of a dream.”

He approaches her bed again and this time he kneels at it as though he is a child about to say bedtime prayers. “I must know. The things you said as Peter. . . is that. . . is that what he went through? Is that what he felt and thought? Is that what my son thought of me, Vanessa?”

“Yes.” She says it without flinching and holds his eyes with her own. “He endured tremendous pain. It was merciless until he breathed his last.”

He absorbs this and chokes on the sob that rises in his throat. He nods. “Thank you,” he says. "For your honesty. I've always wondered. . ." 

She reaches to touch his hands which are clasped together on the edge of her bed. _You man. You child,_ she thinks. “Come,” she says and pulls him up to sit on the mattress. She takes his hands in her own and kisses them. “I am sorry,” she whispers.

“And I am sorry,” he stammers. “For what my son endured because of my vanity. For whatever torture my daughter may now endure because of our sin. I am sorry we are no closer to finding Mina, and I am sorry for you who seem to relive every detail of all of our hell.”

“Could it make you despise me even a little less?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he says. He regards the woman before him who sits wrapped in a sheet, her dark hair tussled around her shoulders. She seems to have forgotten she wears not a stitch and the white sheet has slipped to reveal the pale mounds of her breasts, the deeper rose of her aureolas, the pert red buds of her nipples, and the creamy flesh of her stomach.

“I loved you once,” she says.

“I wish it made a difference now,” he replies. He stands. “Good night, Vanessa.” He takes his leave of her room and makes his way to the stairs. As he walks he removes his collar and hopes there is a decanter of brandy with his name on it.


End file.
